I’m an Adult Now
She Didn’t Seem to Care
Spring 1990
I recall the first time I saw her. It was about a year before we started dating; we were partying at the house of my friends Jake and Dave Prue, brothers from the Black Bass, a small chain restaurant throughout Pennsylvania where I had spent my later teen years working. She was sitting on the end of a big sofa. She was very young, about sixteen years old and very pregnant with Jake’s kid—so much so that I thought the baby was about to burst out right then and there.
It was almost summertime. I was finishing my first year of four at engineering school at Penn State University. I was getting ready to write my final exams and then I would be working at SM-Steel, a local steel mill in my hometown of Pittsburgh, and as a cook at the Black Bass before returning to school for a second year. I was nineteen. Despite my busy work schedule, I always had time to party.
I looked older than my age, so I was rarely carded when I went to buy beer. But because I wasn’t twenty-one yet, I had my ass covered with a high-quality fake ID.
At the time I preferred smoking weed over drinking beer, because I was never hungover from weed like I often was after an evening or afternoon of drinking. Of course, being a stupid kid I usually combined the two to intensify my level of intoxication. Nothing felt better than chugging back a dozen beers and then taking a few hits from a bong.
I just recently had a crude tattoo on my left arm covered over by a professional artist, and when I arrived at the party Jake dragged me over to the couch where she was sitting and he implored me to show her my “awesome new tat.”
My new tattoo was on my upper left arm. It was a large fiery skull with long hair, a musical triplet crashing through it, and small musical notes floating around it. It represented my dedication to music, both as a musician and as a music lover. I chose to use a skull because it represented that I would always have music in me until the day I died. I kept the tattoo on my upper arm so that I was able to keep it hidden when wearing a short-sleeve shirt—back then tattoos were not generally considered to be socially acceptable.
Her name was Jennifer Albright.
She seemed hardly interested at all.
His full name was Charles Johnathan Albright, but they nicknamed him Chucky. Chucky was born that autumn, a few months after I met her for the first time. I had since left the steel mill and returned to school to start up year two with the books. There was a Black Bass franchise near school, so I continued working while studying.
I happened to be at home the weekend that Chucky was born, so I went with Jake to visit the baby and Jennifer in the hospital the day after he had been born. Jake was glowing; he was so proud to be a dad. But he was only eighteen and had no idea what being a dad meant. He had never been exposed to children, let alone infants. Like me, he was a heavy dope user and hardcore partier. In fact, he revealed to me that when Jennifer went into labor he was spaced out on LSD. He was trying to describe how mind-blowing the birthing was while tripping out. His brother Dave later told me that Jake had passed out during the birthing.
Jake awkwardly picked up the baby and handed him to me. Again, Jennifer showed very little interest in me. I never gave it a second thought.
She was destined to change my life forever.
My First Real Relationship
March through August 1991
Jennifer Albright was just turning seventeen and I was twenty when we started dating.
I was just finishing my second year at school; one more week and I would be back home and off to work at SM-Steel. One random night, just after I’d returned home from school, Jennifer Albright called me. She completely blindsided me; we had never said much more than hello to one another. She was no one to me.
She invited me over to her place for a couple of beers and to play Tetris. I knew that their relationship had been struggling, so I asked her about Jake. I didn’t want to get in the middle of whatever they had going on, especially with them having a baby together. She made it clear to me that Jake was no longer with her and hadn’t been for a few months.
I was intrigued—was this a romantic gesture or purely platonic? I figured I had nothing to lose, so I walked over.
Jennifer answered the door and invited me in.
Her mother, Julie, was sitting on a pale blue couch smoking a cigarette and watching Jenn play her video game. She had a drink beside her; it looked like rye. Jenn’s twelve-year-old sister Shelli was also there, sitting off to the side in a little chair reading a book. Chucky was already in bed.
I sat on the floor beside Jenn. Before my butt had even hit the carpet, Julie started drilling me with questions. I had dated my share of girls enough to recognize the typical hazing that many teenaged girls’ parents put young men through. But Julie was in a league of her own.
She cut right to the chase, barraging me with questions. One question of many which stuck with me was: “Would you marry my daughter if you knocked her up?” I thought it odd, as although Jenn was above the age of consent to engage in sex, she was still too young to legally marry.
I seriously considered my response to the question. Finally, I told her, “I would be careful to avoid a pregnancy in the first place.”
Julie nodded and asked, “But what if . . . ?”
I thought a little more and responded, “Well . . . I would, but only if we loved one another.”
Her mom took a sip of her drink and a long drag from her cigarette.
Our eyes locked again, as she told Jenn to get rid of me, right then and there.
Julie had Jenn when she was eighteen herself; she was only thirty-five now. She was a very shrewd and opinionated lady and a bit drunk. I heard what her alcohol-clouded mind was telling me right at that moment: You’re not the one.
A little red flag was raised inside of my mind. I ignored it. Jenn completely ignored my conversation with her mom; she just kept playing her video game. Julie finally asked Jenn if she was going to let me play. She ignored her mother again.
Julie offered me a beer and smiled. “Get me one while you’re up.” She pointed toward the kitchen.
On my way to the kitchen, I smiled and said to myself, “Okay, I think I know what I’m dealing with here.”
I returned, sat on the couch and pulled out my cigarettes and Zippo lighter, laying them on the end table beside me. Julie looked at me.
We had an interesting chat over a few beers. I didn’t care for her all-knowing self-important attitude, but she wasn’t mean or uninviting, she was simply a very experienced woman.
Julie was a Native American. She never knew her father. When she was about three, her abusive drunk of a mother died, after which her older sister raised her in poverty on the reservation. She was later adopted by a loving middle-class European immigrant couple—the Albrights—when she was twelve years old. Despite the life that the Albrights had tried to offer her, she was too deeply rooted in her impoverished upbringing to flourish.
Julie was eighteen in the mid-1970s when she became pregnant with Jenn, and although the Albrights tried to be supportive, society shamed young unwed mothers, especially in upper-middle-class suburban families. Upon adopting her, they had thought they were providing opportunities that she otherwise would never have had. They were showing her how wonderful life could be—and she had screwed it up.
Life had been rough over the years for Julie and her two daughters, Jenn and Shelli. They had grown up poor. Julie refused to accept her adoptive parents’ assistance. For a few years she distanced herself from them; she was too proud to let them see her struggle.
Jenn told me that the best Christmas they ever had was in 1981, when she was eight and Shelli was about three. Julie had no money for gifts or food; she could barely afford rent. They had Kraft Dinner for Christmas dinner, and they sat around the small black and white television watching Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, the only show they could access with just an old antenna.
They learned the meaning of love and respect by the way Julie stood by them when they had nothing. After a few years living in the roughest parts of town and dealing with the dregs of society, their financial struggles finally ended when Julie managed to get a full-time permanent union job that paid well at a local factory. That, according to Jenn, made the family cherish and appreciate their future Christmases even more.
It was at that point that Julie reconnected with her adoptive family.
Julie’s adoptive parents doted on the girls. Jenn’s grandfather found her especially endearing. She was smart and pretty. She seemed to have a good head on her shoulders. She was the reason his old gray eyes sparkled. She was also the reason why his old gray eyes lost their sparkle.
After Jenn became pregnant with Chucky her grandfather refused to see her. She had so much going for her and he felt that she had ruined her future—he didn’t want to see her go down the same path as her mother had.
Her heart was broken.
He died before Chucky was born. Jenn felt horribly, and that look of disappointment from his face when she told him she was pregnant remained etched into her brain.
So, there I sat talking up Julie while Jenn continued with her game of Tetris. After an hour or two, Shelli pulled her nose out of her book and went to bring Chucky down for a bottle and for me to see him before I left. This was the first time I’d seen him since I’d visited him just after he was born. He was now six or so months old.
I went home with a strange but quirky feeling. Jenn had barely spoken to me and Julie had already predicted the end of our relationship before it had even started.
In addition to my long, straggly red hair, huge sideburns, and big-ass tattoo, I was the drummer in a metal band. I think that was what initially attracted Jenn to me. I came across as if I was living the rock ’n’ roll lifestyle, and she wanted to be a part of it. I had learned that being a musician on the stage attracted a lot of women, but they were usually piss-drunk or high when we were done performing. I felt that I owed it to them to not take advantage of their intoxicated state, although that didn’t mean I wouldn’t let them go down on me.
Jenn called me again the next day. And the day after that. We talked for quite a while each time and I became quite impressed with her unbridled tenacity; the way she pursued me and worked to gain my attention made me believe that she really wanted to be with me. This dispelled my initial misgivings about her. Nonetheless, it took me a couple of anxiety-ridden dates before I finally worked up the gumption to kiss her.
Since my first kiss, I had a complex about my kissing technique. I was under the impression that you had to literally suck the breath out of the mouth of the girl you were kissing, because Mom had always called it “suck-facing.”
None of the girls I kissed had ever said anything, but I was generally left feeling that making out wasn’t as fun as it was supposed to be. Jenn was only sixteen and I was twenty, but the difference in age was of no consequence to us, and our parents never expressed any displeasure. When I finally did kiss Jenn, she jumped up and wrapped her legs around me while pressing her soft lips against mine. I began my suck-facing routine and she pulled away.
“What are you doing?” she asked. Her bewildered face was only inches away from mine.
I was tremendously embarrassed.
Jenn giggled. “Relax,” she cooed as she tilted her head and looked down at my mouth. She slowly pressed her lips against mine once again, and then licked my lips. I liked it. She told me to do the same to her, and I liked that too. We slowly started making out. Within a few minutes my kissing stigma was gone.
Finally, I understood why kissing was considered romantic and fun.
After that, our relationship took off like an I don’t know what. She was very up front and warned me that she wanted to be cautious about having sex—she didn’t want to get pregnant again and so we would not engage in intercourse for a long while. Jenn was going to be my first lover so I was just a little more than wanting to get inside her pants, but I figured that I had held off this long from getting laid so there was no big deal if I waited another month or two.
We slept together a week after our first kiss.
The first time we had sex it was rather unremarkable. Although Jenn was experienced, she was used to her partner just rutting on her for a moment or two and then finishing. She had never experienced any deep satisfaction when having sex, and she had little if any experience with foreplay. My attitude was that I wanted my girlfriend to feel as beautiful as she was; giving her an orgasm was the most powerful source of pleasure that I had to offer.
The next evening we made love again. I wanted to be a little more adventurous and compatible with each other in bed, even if it was only my second time having sex. We were in my bedroom and I wanted to try something new, which I had seen in porn many times. She was lying on my bed naked, and I spread her legs wide and licked and kissed her from her lips down to her belly and then to her clitoris.
Within minutes she had her first orgasm ever.
Life was perfect.
I was living with the woman of my dreams.
I had a small family.
Shortly after meeting Jenn I left the Black Bass. It was late April, just after the end of my second of the four school years. I was making killer money when I went back to work at the local steel mill as a laborer. I had decided not to return to school in the upcoming fall term but to stay working at the mill. I knew that I would be laid off at Christmastime because work was slow, and that I would be rehired the following spring. I also knew that Unemployment Insurance would yield me a nice little income during the few months of being unemployed and that this would help take care of my Jenn and Chucky, showing them how it was living the high life.
I worked my ass off so that I could I share my good fortune with Jenn and Chucky by taking them for nice dinners out, trips to theme parks, and adventurous travels to different tourist attractions.
Just having a car to travel in was a luxury that Jenn had never experienced.
I was so addicted to my new life that I all but turned my back on my friends at the Bass without even a goodbye. I had heard through the grapevine that Jake felt quite betrayed by me, and that he had become extremely vocal about it.
One night early in our relationship, Jake brought Chucky home to us from his scheduled weekend visit. He was with his friends in a small gray Ford sedan. After dropping Chucky off, the wheels of the tires squealed down the street and I clearly heard Jake yell out of the passenger window, “Fuckin’ slut!” two or three times while the driver honked the horn.
A few days later, Jake’s younger brother Dave reassured me that I had done nothing wrong. Jake had been out of the picture for several months. But Dave warned me that it wasn’t quite as open and shut as Jenn made it out to be. Jake had still been seeing Jenn almost right up to when I came into the picture. But the two had nothing in common except for Chucky. Apparently, Jake had become overwhelmed by fatherhood and his new responsibilities.
To further Jake’s issues, he barely even knew Jenn as a person when she got pregnant. They were two young teens who had met through a common friend, and in less than two months she was pregnant. It was out of a sense of obligation that Jake and Jenn stayed together throughout her pregnancy and for a short while afterward.
Jenn told me that the night that she got pregnant was on New Year’s Eve. They were tripping on LSD at an Alice Cooper concert. She wasn’t on the birth control pill, and they didn’t use a condom because when Jake was an early teen he’d been in an accident of some sort and one of his testicles had been badly damaged and was not tended to properly. It had atrophied and the doctors told him he would be impotent for the rest of his life.
Furthermore, he had become jealous of his son. Chucky was taking all of Jenn’s time, so in response he had strayed. He began nailing a new girl. When Jenn spoke of this I saw a different side of her. She began trashing this new girlfriend—it was a lot like how Jake was trashing me. At the time I was so blinded by my love for Jenn and Chucky that I barely even noticed this commonality, but still, I wondered: If she was happy with me, why would she care who Jake was screwing?
Dave told me that he had been telling Jake for months to get his shit together or someone else was going to come along and scoop her up right from under his nose. He was right.
Jake’s parents, particularly his mother Gwen, insisted that they remain in constant contact with Chucky. He was their flesh and blood regardless of any teenaged bullshit that Jake and Jenn had going on. As per Jenn, Gwen dropped by whenever she felt like it and expected Jenn to spend time with her.
Jenn did not like this. Not one bit. And she was very vocal about it.
Most times Julie would sit down with Gwen in Jenn’s place.
I knew the Prues: Gwen and her husband Frank. I had always liked them. Deep inside I was somewhat perplexed. They were good people. They reminded me of my own parents. Friendly. Open. Inviting. Earlier that year, Dave and I had spent New Year’s Eve in his basement bedroom getting drunk. His dad even went so far as to check my (fake) ID to ensure that I was over twenty-one—the legal drinking age—before letting me drink my beer in his house. Dave was only seventeen so he wasn’t allowed to drink. I would hide a beer in the washroom vanity every time he needed another.
Ironically, that was the same night that Jake and Jenn dropped acid and ended up getting her pregnant.
I was young and in love for the first time. This was beyond any crush or infatuation I had ever experienced.
One afternoon after a couple more dates, I told Jenn that I wanted to bring Chucky along on our next outing.
“That is exactly what I’ve been hoping for!” She wrapped her arms around my neck. “I want you to be more than just a part of Chucky’s life. I want him to call you Dad.”
I smiled and told her that I wanted that too. We began to kiss.
We looked at each other with sly sparkles in our eyes and crooked smiles on our faces. Julie was at work. Chucky was at daycare. Shelli was at school. I stroked Jenn’s long raven-black hair. We didn’t even make it all the way into the house before I was deep inside of her.
We had only been together for a couple of months when I told her that I loved her and wanted to marry her in a year or two when I had saved enough money to afford a big wedding, and even possibly buying and moving out into our own house. She was thrilled with this idea—she said that would be her dream come true. I didn’t know that someone could have a smile as wide as hers at that moment.
Chucky was such a great baby. He hardly ever fussed and he smiled and giggled a lot. Within a couple of months, I left the comfort of my parents’ house and moved in with Jenn and her family. Well, I unofficially moved in. Jenn was on welfare, which not only ensured there would be shelter over their heads and food on the table, but an extra bit for “miscellaneous expenses” such as liquor and dope. If I officially moved in with her as her common-law partner, with my high wages from the steel mill she would be cut off from her benefits. At the time I never thought twice about it.
Jenn decided that my parents should be Chucky’s grandparents. Jenn had never met her own father. All she knew about him was that he was a Native American and that he refused to assume any responsibility for her. Julie was the only other grandparent that Chucky had.
My parents loved that little boy so much. They accepted him as though he was their flesh and blood. Like me, they doted on his every action. I clearly remember my dad lying on their bed throwing Chucky up and down in the air. I don’t know which of the two laughed louder. And Mom built up quite the collection of books to read to him. Chucky loved it when Grandma read to him.
Enter the Mullet Man
September 1991
Chucky had been enrolled in daycare since he was a month or two old. This was because of a government social service directed at young teen mothers with the aim of promoting good parenting skills and teaching them how to reintegrate themselves into society.
Jenn returned to high school while I worked at the mill. We had been together for six months at that point. I was proud of her for trying to reopen the doors of opportunity rather than sitting on her ass collecting welfare like some of the girls she had befriended through these social programs.
One day, shortly after she had returned to school, I was off shift and I came home after running a few errands to find some guy with the definitive mullet sitting on our couch while Jenn was in the kitchen making lunch. I went in to see Jenn and she explained that not only was he a friend that she’d met at school, but that he’d claimed to have known me in middle school.
His name was Mike Jagger.
Upon looking at him, I recognized that I had known him when I was in middle school.
Mike had been dealt a shitty hand in life. His father was a career criminal and he had instilled some of his less favorable attributes in Mike.
Mike’s days and nights were filled with partying and supporting himself by committing petty crimes, such as break and enters, stealing car stereos, and trafficking dope. When he was only eighteen years old he had been busted for a B&E. He had been jailed for three months.
He would be on probation until he was twenty-two. I had just turned twenty-one, as had he a few months earlier, so he just had to keep his nose out of the shit for one more year and he could become legit. Sounds easy, right?
Nope. But as I came to understand Mike I understood why.
Mike openly admired me. I was smart and I worked hard to get ahead in life. He was especially impressed that I was doing it legitimately. Unlike Mike, I had been raised by stable and loving parents. Mike was excited to introduce me to his parents. I think that he was trying to impress upon them that he was turning over a new leaf and not hanging out with criminals any longer.
Mike’s parents were divorced. His mother had all but given up on him. She was a miserable woman and had remarried. Mike’s stepdad openly disliked him, often referring to him as “criminal trash.” As soon as Mike was eighteen his mother kicked him out; it was shortly thereafter that Mike was imprisoned for breaking and entering.
After getting out of jail, Mike’s stepdad wouldn’t even let him have a key to the house. His mother didn’t object. When I learned of what she had been through, first with Mike’s dad and then with Mike, I saw where she was coming from. When I did meet them I didn’t like that I was treated like just another criminal, but I reasoned that after years of disappointment I really couldn’t blame her. But his stepdad was an asshole. Mike’s dad wouldn’t take him in, so Mike got his own apartment and sold dope and stolen car stereos to pay for it.
His father had been bad news and raised Mike to be a lifelong criminal—crime was all that Mike knew. I first met Mike’s dad at a party at his dad’s girlfriend’s house. I took an instant disliking to him. He was cocky to the point of being narcissistic. I sensed that he didn’t care for me either. Mike was always unsuccessfully trying to gain his father’s approval. His father looked like a criminal—he had an age-hardened affect. Mike tried to impress his father by telling him how smart I was; his father seemed even less impressed.
Mike’s father worked at the same mill as I did. He was a laborer, and although he didn’t know me he knew what the smart guys did. As per the stereotype, they wore fancy lab coats over their shirts and ties and walked around with clipboards. They were always taking notes. They rarely addressed the workers, but they always knew how to do the workers’ jobs better than they did. They then returned to their air-conditioned offices and proceeded to determine how the work could be streamlined and/or made more efficient, which often meant eliminating jobs or adding tasks to their already full plates.
Somehow, Mike’s mother had instilled a decent set of morals in him. Mike’s dad had spent a good chunk of time in and out of jail while Mike was a youth. Mike was rarely violent and his criminal activities were never personal—he would only steal from businesses, never from people’s homes. Usually all he stole was cash register money and car stereos. I know that didn’t put him high up on the to-be-sainted list, but after listening to some of his stories about his father’s behavior, he looked golden.
Mike’s proudest moment in his life was from when he was nine years old.
His maternal grandparents owned a little cottage on a small obscure lake way up north just on the States side of Quebec in Canada where his family would go for their summer holidays. Mike often reminisced about the great times he’d had as a child going fishing with his dad, when his dad wasn’t in jail.
They would go up to his grandparents’ cottage on weekends to go fishing and hunting—or so Mike believed. During the late summer and late autumn days, while the summer crowds were returning home for the winter, his dad and crew went on their annual blitzing of cottages and small businesses. Mike’s dad had no conscience. He would trash his victims’ homes in search of valuables.
This particular year was Mike’s initiation into the family business. His dad had been raising hell there since he was Mike’s age.
While his dad and crew were tearing apart someone’s cottage, Mike was assigned the role of lookout. His dad had told him that the police were rarely out in this region. There was a small town nearby with a police force made up of about ten officers who were responsible for a vast region of land, most of which was cottage country with a lot of lakes and forests. The lakefront properties served as summer homes for the well off. And that made their properties prime meat for the hungry wolves.
This night, while his dad was doing his thing, Mike heard voices and saw flashlights waving back and forth, beaming through the forest and wooded paths. It was the police. Mike did his job and alerted the crew. His dad and cohorts escaped; unfortunately, Mike didn’t.
He was drilled for hours, but he refused to turn in his old man or any of the crew. Since Mike wasn’t caught in the act of stealing or inside the cottage, the police had no grounds to hold him. They said they couldn’t leave him in the outdoors unsupervised so they had to drive him home.
Mike’s dad had never shared any escape plan or identified a place to regroup if they had the cops on their tail. Mike was the worst criminal I knew. He was the only career criminal that I knew. He almost always ended up doing something stupid and getting caught.
Back then there were no telephones in the northern towns, so the police took Mike straight back to his grandparents’ cottage. His mother was there—she was pissed that his dad was involving him in crime. That was the last year that she was with his dad before suing for divorce.
It never occurred to Mike that his dad would be there too.
The police grilled his dad and family but they couldn’t place his dad at the crime scene, so they reluctantly didn’t arrest him. Mike’s mom suppressed her fury until the police were finished questioning the family and left. Mike’s dad said nothing to him, but he later gave him a whooping for getting caught and leading the police to his home.
And that is why Mike claimed that not ratting out his dad and crew when he was nine years old was the proudest moment of his life.